Purpose of Debate Camp

It seems there is a trend recently of kids who think the following “I can do research on my own, the purpose of debate camp is for me to work on speaking”. This could not be further from the truth, in fact in my opinion the exact opposite is the case. Here is why

Speaking
While it may be true that you can’t really have a 4 person debate on your own, this is generally not how you improve as a speaker. You improve through constantly practicing and working on the things you need to improve on. Generally there are 4 things high school kids need to get better at
-Clarity
-Speed
-Efficiency
-Argument Quality

None of these require another person for you to work on. After every practice speech your lab leaders may make some comments about specific arguments you made but in general they are going to tell you to work on those 4 things.

YOU CAN DO THIS BY YOURSELF! The first two, speed and clarity, are easy to work on, its just a practice issue. Speak and speak and speak. You don’t need another person to listen to you do this. You can do it at night in your dorm, or at home after camp. In fact, to improve on these areas quickly you will need to speak for extended periods of time, at least 20-30 minutes. Doing 10 mini debates where you give 1-2 minute speeches is basically worthless in this regard. You need to work in larger increments. This is analogous to the overtraining concept in sports/fitness. If you need to give an 8 minute speech at your top clear speed, train for a 10 minute speech and you will never run out of gas.

Efficiency is trickier ,but also does not require you to have someone else in the room. You can recognize when you are being inefficient. The only way to get more efficient is to make a constant effort to work on saying more with less and not repeating yourself. You don’t need to pay thousands of dollars for another person to tell you “don’t repeat arguments, don’t read 10 uniqueness cards when 3 will do” etc.

Argument quality is one that may actually benefit from you getting more debates in. However, there is a minimum amount of knowledge/prep you must do before a debate will be of any value to you. In order to construct good arguments you need to RESEARCH and understand the issues you are debating. This takes a lot of time before the first words come out of your mouth.

The The War of Art Steven Pressfield defines a concept he calls Resistance. Resistance is anything that keeps you from doing the hard work necessary to advance in life. Resistance is turning on the TV, delaying your diet by saying I will start tomorrow, and thinking you need some kind of external authority to help you improve. Debaters today use practice debates as a form of Resistance. They don’t need to do the hard work of research and argument construction because the short term reward of debate is available. Like any sport, debate is about delayed gratification. You work hard for weeks knowing that when tournament time comes you have put in the hours and will be light years ahead of the competition. Any time you think, I don’t want to take the time to learn about the underwater salt conveyor belt , I just want to have a T mini debate, that is Resistance trying to beat you.

So what is the purpose of debate camp?

You should spend every second of time at debate camp you can trying to learn how to research and construct quality arguments/blocks. Here are the reasons why

1. Why D-Heidt is the best- Anyone who has met Dave knows he is not a rapid fire speaker. When he debated he didn’t overwhelm his opponents with technical prowess. He went into every debate knowing more about the topic and having better researched the issues involved. He had the best cards on each argument and knew when and where to read them because he had a commanding and unparalleled understanding of the issues involved. This has spilled over to his coaching both at Emory and Westminster. Going into a debate with a Dave cut file was a tremendous confidence boost because you knew there was no way you would get caught with your pants down: each argument the other team could make had been anticipated and a block responding to it had been prepared. This is not a magical ability that Dave has, it is something he has learned from years of hard work. If you are in Dave’s lab and you spend all your time re-doing speeches on conditionality bad you are wasting your time. While he has a lot to say about that and basically any other issue that is not what makes him D-Heidt. Your lab leaders can teach you how to produce files like the ones described above, but you need to use them as a resource. However, most kids at camp do the following
-sit on AIM all day in the library
-chit chat with their friends in person
-spend hours preparing for practice debates where there is not even a winner or loser
-cut 10 cards, pat themselves on the back, and start playing computer games
-return out old evidence from planet debate or a school back file
-only look for the cites their lab leaders gave them and do no original research
-just use lexis and never use the top notch university library system they have access to
-assume that since most camp evidence is shared over the internet now it’s a waste of time to do a lot of work at camp when you can free ride

This is resistance. This is a total waste of time, yours and your lab leaders. Most files that come out of camps are of a low quality because the people working on them do the things listed above, procrastinating till the last second, and then lab leaders have maybe a day to fix a file on a huge topic like global warming. The files include few blocks, are rarely organized well, contain lots of bad evidence etc.

You get plenty of off time at camp to see your friends and fool around. If you are at debate camp to become a better debater and win debates you need to work and you need to motivate yourself to do it. When it is time to work you should hit it full stride. You need to do a lot of research and cut a lot of cards. Then you need to take those cards to your lab leaders and find out why they suck, why don’t you have enough on XYZ issue, what sources you overlooked etc. Then you go and research more. Then you go back to your lab leader and find out again what you need to change. Wash, rinse, repeat. Then you have a decent amount of good evidence, now you need to learn how to organize it, how to write efficient blocks, how to predict the other teams arguments, then go research those, write blocks, repeat. These are things you can also learn on your own but they are MUCH EASIER to learn under the tutelage of someone who has been there.

2. Research access. Most of you will leave camp and have very limited access to University quality libraries. You should therefore take advantage of your time with them. Enough said. In addition to that, there are more ways to research electronically than google and google news. You should be trying to learn these from your lab leaders. Every year we give research tips and rarely see them put to use. You should pay attention , learn them, use them, if you have questions- ask them. And then you should be trying to learn more. A 1 hour lecture on research usually only scratches the surface of the things you can do, but due to time constraints and total lack of interest most lab leaders don’t go into any more detail than that. At Michigan we spend about 4 hours in the library almost every day, and during that time kids will on average ask lab leaders maybe 1 or 2 questions a day. As I write this I can see plenty of kids not doing their work. Obviously lab leaders can chastise you and maybe even give you work detail etc. but ultimately you need to make an internal decision to work harder, you have to want it.

3. Argument construction- the most important thing you can learn from your lab leaders. How do you write an alternative text, how do you research one, how do you search for permutation answers, what kinds of search terms produce the best politics uniqueness evidence, etc. etc. The process of research and writing arguments only gets better with practice. Your lab leaders can give you shortcuts that will help you learn faster than you would learn alone.